


Yarn over

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Crafts, Father-Son Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 14:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2655857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody is perfect (apart from Maglor).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yarn over

“Moryo?” Fëanáro called through the closed door to his fourth son's bedroom, and waited. There was no reply. He shifted the basket he carried in his arms, and tried again. “I've got a portion of your order here.” 

It still took some time before Carnistir finally answered. “Come in,” he said without any enthusiasm. He didn't open the door, either.

Fëanáro balanced the basket on one arm to do it himself. When he stepped inside his son's room, the sight he was met with left him speechless for a moment.

Carnistir was lying on a mound of yarn. Yarn, coming in balls or skeins or cones, or worked into all sorts of finished and unfinished projects, littered almost every corner of the once-bedroom. Only the space around the threshold had been spared. Fëanáro put down the basket, itself filled with more yarn, to the side of the door. 

“Where's Turco?” Carnistir asked. 

“Írissë came, and Curufinwë and he went out with her.”

Carnistir threw an arm over his eyes and scoffed an imprecation. Tyelcormo had promised him he would wait for the delivery, had assured him he would be there in case he needed anything, but of course Írissë's whims were more important than a commitment to his brother, and of course his father had to be the one who took the yarn.

“Which yarn is it?” he asked, trying to prevent the inevitable question.

“They said it's the dyed linen.”

“Ah yes. Thank you.” 

It was too much to hope that his father would simply leave. 

“What's wrong?” Fëanáro worriedly enquired.

“Nothing,” Carnistir lied, even knowing that his father wasn't going to be fooled. 

“...do you need help putting everything back?”

“I'm not putting anything back now and I can do it myself,” he snapped. His retort was followed by silence, but he knew his father was still there. His presence was hard to ignore at any time; it became all-pervasive when one was the focus of his attention. He risked a glance in his direction. As expected, he stood near the door, looking a little hurt and a little offended. Carnistir sat up. 

“...sorry, it's just...I'm stuck. I have a couple dozen projects to finish but I don't feel like working on any of them. It'd be useless anyway. They're all mediocre.”

Fëanáro let his gaze wander over the chaotic, but rich, display of his son's craft – hours and hours of patient work, of repeated precise gestures and constant concentration. “They aren't. It's perfectly normal to feel listless from time to time. Your mother and I have plenty of slow spells too.”

“Except that you and mom are unrivalled at what you do,” Carnistir grumbled back. 

“Yarn-related work is more common than smithing or sculpting. It's obvious you have considerably more competition...and you can always strive to improve, if you feel the need to.” Fëanáro made to sit on a soft-looking bundle, closer to where Carnistir was lying (but not too close).

Carnistir stopped him just in time. “No- not there! Those are the cobweb knitted shawls.”

Fëanáro sprang back up as if stung by an insect. The bundle came undone in the movement, however, and when he lifted it to hand it to Carnistir, he caught a glimpse of a fabric so thin it could truly have been a spider's web. 

“You _are_ aware that people would pay you whatever you ask them to have one of those.”

“...maybe.” Carnistir took the wispy shawl out and diligently folded it back, before closing the bundle again and laying it in a chest, out of harm's way. “But-...the designs are nothing extraordinary, and I might have made mistakes without even noticing. What if they're not perfect?”

“What? It wouldn't diminish your talent, or your dedication. Mistakes aren't that terrible.”

“You don't make mistakes.”

“My work is completely different! Half of the mistakes I could make would lead to serious injury, and the rest would make whatever object I'm trying to craft unusable. There's a pile of refuses in the forge. You have the advantage of being able to correct mistakes as you go.”

“Right, it's a matter of standards,” Carnistir returned, rather caustically. A lot of what his father considered refuses would have been viewed as fine creations by other smiths. 

Fëanáro sighed and sat (more cautiously) on a pile of blankets that came in every design and colour (and any combination thereof). He opened his arms. Still edgy, but at the same time too dispirited to resist the solace they offered, Carnistir waded through the sea of fiber to sink himself into their hug. 

Before either could speak (or perhaps neither felt the need to), there was a rustling sound and a bag came falling over their heads, tumbling its contents all around them. 

“Ouch.”

“Sorry...it's the scraps bag. It was. Oh shit,” Carnistir groaned, spotting a crochet hook inside a tangled mass of thread. “It's the bone hook I couldn't find.”

“The one you quarreled with Nelyo over?”

“He's going to fume all over again.”

“Considering you called him an 'inflated, good for nothing, hook-snatcher'...” Fëanáro laughed. “Shall we make a blanket together with the scraps?” 

Carnistir eyed the oddly sized balls dubiously. “...it's all very different kinds of yarn, it'd come out crooked for sure.”

“Not everything needs to be perfect.”

“...not even a son,” Carnistir sulkily added before he could stop himself.

“ _Especially_ not a son.” Fëanáro tightened his hold around him. “Or a father, for that matter.”

“But you -”

“A lot of the things I do are perfect, yes, or reckoned to be. But...do you really see me as perfect, overall?”

Carnistir looked up at his father's face, too striking to be simply handsome, too expressive not to fluster. Impulsively, he would have said 'yes'. It was easy to be dazzled by Fëanáro, his masterfulness and ingenuity were the target of much envy as well as admiration, but Carnistir had only to think of their latest argument - a brief but loud spat over something so trivial he didn't even remember it, during which they had 'shrieked like a pair of grumpy cats', according to the twins' testimony - to switch to the opposite answer. He grinned. “No...no, definitely not.” His smile widened as another thought struck him. “Cáno _is_ perfect.”

“Cáno doesn't count,” Fëanáro quickly rejoined. It was a habitual joke among them, but not wholly humorous. Macalaurë seemed to glide over everything with hardly a concern. If absolute perfection was something that actually existed, it had to be something very similar to the blithe insouciance with which Macalaurë faced the world. Or at least have that at its root. “So?”

“You don't have work to do?”

“My work can wait, and we don't have to finish the blanket all in one go, do we?”

Carnistir shook his head.

“It'll be like when I first taught you.”

“But it won't,” Carnistir countered, almost indignant. “I'm pretty sure you don't know half the stitches I now know.”

Fëanáro smiled. Carnistir had more self-confidence than he himself realised. Sooner or later he would see that. “Then _you_ teach me.”


End file.
